Lexical accessing for ambiguous words among advanced Chinese L2 learners

This study investigated factors associated with and strategies used by advanced Chinese L2 learners in accessing the meanings of commonly used polysemous words (lexically ambiguous words) in sentential reading. The participants included 26 learners of Chinese from a Midwest university in the US. The results showed that word frequency, meaning frequency of polysemous words, and learners’ knowledge of polysemous words affected successful lexical access in sentential contexts. Learners mainly used five types of strategies to solve lexical ambiguity problems, of which three were more frequently used: contextual cues, the intra-word analysis method, and the dominant meaning cue. Contextual cues were the most frequently used strategy.